Procurement and Supply Chain - Oakdene Hollins

WR1403: Business Waste Prevention Evidence Review
L2m4-3: Procurement & Supply Chain
Standards, Environmental Management Systems (EMS) and Labelling
Understanding the whole-life impacts of products and services can be difficult. Therefore, various
standards, certification schemes and labels for products and services based on social, economic and
environmental criteria (4 p. 13) have been developed to assist in purchasing decisions. Waste prevention
is encompassed in the following standards:
Standards for implementing an EMS (e.g. British Standards Institution’s BS 8555 and International
Organisation for Standardisation’s ISO 14001 (2 p. 25)
European Community’s Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) (4 p. 62) (2 p. 25)
BRE’s British Environmental and Sustainability Standard 6001 (83 p. 2)
Canadian Environmental Choice Programme (21 p. 85)
Green Seal Environmental Partners (21 p. 85)
Manuals of ‘environmentally-friendly’ products and services developed by local authorities (97 p.
18).
Similarly, labels such as the Japanese Eco-Mark (21 p. 85), the European Union’s Ecolabel (2 p. 25) or the
Canadian Environmental Choice Programme’s Eco-Logo label (19 p. 31) may play an important role in
procurement. 2003 research on nine retail chains in Italy accounting “for more than 80% of the retailing
sector” found that “the large majority of the interviewed companies use the eco-label as an effective and
useful assessment tool for their suppliers, in order to select them for their vendor-list” (21). This suggests
that purchaser power can drive suppliers to work towards achieving the EU Ecolabel.
We should note that EU Ecolabel is a generic approach, but that there are many more product and
sector-specific ‘eco’ labels in operation, often tackling different impacts. For example, in textiles, in
addition to EU Ecolabel, Oekotex, GUTS and Bluesign are commonplace but have varying relevance to
waste prevention.
Standards, codes and labels can also be adopted by the purchasing organisations themselves, again with
the aim of facilitating the sustainable procurement process:
As part of its EMS, an Oregon (USA) manufacturer and direct marketer of period-authentic lighting
and house parts Rejuvenation “had an employee task force examining vendor packaging” (17 p. 10).
In 2001, the London Mayor’s Green Procurement Code was launched with Regional Development
Agency funding, although the initial focus was on encouraging materials with high recycled content
rather than waste prevention (97). The Code was re-launched in October 2007 with a new emphasis
on “management and behaviour change” and a widened remit to “reflect the broad range of
environmental considerations in procurement, from energy efficiency to the use of sustainable
natural resources and from buying recycled content products to minimising vehicle emissions”. a
In summer 2010, Action Sustainability launched BS 8903: Principles and Framework for Procuring
Sustainability, described as ‘the world's first standard for sustainable procurement’ b .
The modules L2m4-1: Standards and L2m4-2: Labelling provide more information in this area.
Tools
Successful business and procurement, the 2010 SDRN report introduced above identifies several tools
used in the public sector such as “supplier assessment questionnaires, life cycle assessment tools, and
mathematical modelling” (5 pp. 7-8). However, few were used in the private sector and no evidence was
found of waste prevention resulting from their use.
a http://www.greenprocurementcode.co.uk/?q=node/75
b http://www.actionsustainability.com/
34 For Defra